Mmmm I'll have an order of those fries!
I think the Spanish Inquisition was still a thing in the 16th century, so their religious negativity for the potato and Spain's declaring it poisonous "fits." Was it the church that also declared tomatoes to be poisonous? Someone did.
i don't know but i do know that when one of Chris Columbus' people came back with tobacco that he was imprisoned because of something along the lines of "only the devil could make a man breathe out smoke"... they kept him in jail for 15 years or so too, well after tobacco was already in widespread use.
LOL, that sounds so typical of the people in those times. It must have been horrible, trying to survive under all those ridiculous offenses they made up out of thin air!